The transfer of voice and video traffic over packet networks, and especially over IP networks, is rapidly gaining acceptance and usage has correspondingly increased. As the industry providing these services matures, the billing for usage of these types of services has become more important. Due to the high growth in this area, it is important that any accounting and invoicing services be flexible and scalable.
Land-line and wireless call accounting and billing systems are well known. There exist hardware systems capable of tracking telephone call activity generated by PBX (Private Branch Exchange) phone systems from the source of the call record to the assignment of accountability. However, these systems are not capable of providing billing services for communications over packet-based networks. The packet-based nature of IP communications makes them fundamentally different from PBX calls and therefore a new billing system is required.
One object of the invention is to solve the above problem and to provide a method by which the usage of IP services can be readily determined. The present invention also provides the service provider with a means for determining the proper entity to charge and the proper amount to charge as well as generating a customized invoice.